Super Bowl fire burns low in Boston

February 04, 2005|By Joe McDermott Of The Morning Call

It's still a Red Sox nation.

Sure, the New England Patriots are going for their third Super Bowl win in four years. Sure, they're speaking the "D" word -- dynasty -- more and more boldly. And sure, they have the experience, players and coaching to give the Eagles all they can handle.

But you wouldn't know it in downtown Boston.

This is baseball country. This is where previous Patriots celebrations were marked by shouts of "Yankees [stink]" and "Jeter [stinks]." The only real signs of Super Bowl fever are congratulatory banners hanging from the Massachusetts Statehouse and Boston City Hall.

"The best way to say it is they love the Patriots, but the Red Sox are their passion," said Rocky Hager, head football coach of the Northeastern University Huskies in the South End.

"They're still excited about the Red Sox" winning the World Series, said Ed Mackillop, a manager for Boston Golf and Out of Left Field, two souvenir stands at the historic Faneuil Hall where Patriots AFC championship shirts, hats and jerseys languish on shelves.

The Super Bowl game, he said, is "still a big deal, but it's not as big a deal."

If Boston and Philadelphia can be considered mirror cities -- both were at the heart of the American Revolution, both have a rich colonial, cultural and educational heritage, and both claim Ben Franklin as their own -- then the Eagles and Patriots personify those reflections.

Like the Eagles, the Pats have a strong, confident and talented quarterback in Tom Brady. Kicker Adam Vinatieri is as important to the Pats as David Akers is to the Birds. Both show a stingy defense, and coaches Andy Reid and Bill Belichick are respected for what they've done over the past five years.

But the Patriots have one thing the Eagles long for, a Super Bowl ring -- two in fact.

It might be their very success that makes the Patriots almost an afterthought in the hearts of Bostonians. Wander around the city and talk to people and the game that matters here is the fifth game against the hated Yankees. That set the stage for the World Series win that will go down in history here as an event as important as a famous tea party once held in the harbor.

A win Sunday by the Patriots in Jacksonville is pretty much seen as a given.

"It's almost like it's expected," Sean Williams, a bartender at the Back Bay sports bar Champions. "It's the Patriots' third, so it's not as exciting as the first."

Even transplanted Eagles fans are expecting a Patriots win Sunday.

Hager moved to Boston in March after seven years as an assistant coach at Temple University. He still calls Marlton, N.J., home. He knows coaches on both pro teams. He's coached against several players from both teams while working in the NCAA Atlantic Conference.

"I would say it would warm my heart if the Eagles won, but my gut says experience will tip it to New England," said Hager.

Diehard Pats fans like electrician Jake Morrison said such expectations are rooted in the respect fans have for the Patriots.

"Everyone just loves the working class attitude of the team," Morrison said.

But Morrison fears confidence could be the Pats' biggest obstacle Sunday. Morrison saw his first Patriots game in 1961 when the team was still known as the Boston Patriots and played at Fenway Park. Morrison shelled out $500 three weeks ago so he and his oldest son could watch the Pats disassemble the Indianapolis Colts and quarterback Peyton Manning.

He hopped a plane to Houston on Super Bowl Sunday last year and nabbed a $900 game ticket that put him in the club seats right in front of George and Barbara Bush.

Morrison worries about Donovan McNabb and Andy Reid. He also worries that many in Patriots country are taking the Eagles too lightly.

There's "overconfidence -- from wanting it so much, from taking the Philadelphia Eagles for granted, which I think is a mistake," he explained.

Part of the reason for the dearth of Pats fever in Boston might be due to the fact that they play in Foxborough, almost an hour outside of town. Even visiting teams don't stay in Boston. They stay in Providence, R.I.

"Foxborough is so far away we get more Buffalo Bills fans," said Jon Maslowski, who serves up drinks at a sports bar across the street from the Fleet Center, where the Celtics play.

Customers Kelli Ahearn and Kim Mellon said Patriots fever is much stronger outside of Boston than it is in the city.

"There are "Go Pats' signs in farm fields and painted in the snow" in central Massachusetts, said Ahearn, a Brighton native who lives in Boston.

In Philadelphia, the downtown skyscrapers are bathed in green, the illuminated sign atop the PECO building flashes "Go Eagles" across the city, and suburban newspapers use green ink on their flags at the top of their front pages.

Richard Fries, a bicycling magazine publisher from Arlington, Mass., said you have to go to the blue-collar towns that ring Boston -- places like Billerica, Medford, Bedford and Lowell -- to find the Patriots fan base.